After Obama spoke with Putin, suspected Russian airstrikes hit hospitals and a school in rebel-held Syria

A
boy lies on a bed with an injured hand after what is said to be a
missile attack on a hospital in Azaz, Aleppo, Syria, February 15,
2016 in this still image taken from a video on a social media
website.REUTERS/Social
Media

Close to 50 civilians were killed and more wounded when missiles
hit three hospitals and a school in rebel-held Syrian towns on
Monday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, as Russian-backed Syrian
troops intensified their push toward the rebel stronghold of
Aleppo.

According to UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq, Ban said the attacks
were "blatant violations of international laws" that "are
further degrading an already devastated health care system and
preventing access to education in Syria."

Fourteen people were killed in the town of Azaz near the Turkish
border when missiles slammed into a school sheltering families
fleeing the offensive and the children's hospital, two residents
and a medic said.

Bombs also hit another refugee shelter south of the town and a
convoy of trucks, another resident said.

"We have been moving scores of screaming children from the
hospital," medic Juma Rahal said. At least two
children were killed and scores of people injured, according
to him.

Activists posted video online purporting to show the damaged
hospital. Three crying babies lay in incubators in a ward
littered with broken medical equipment. Reuters could not
independently verify the video.

In a separate incident, missiles hit another hospital in the town
of Marat Numan in Idlib province, in north western Syria, said
the French president of the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans
Frontières (MSF) charity, which was supporting the hospital.

"There were at least seven deaths among the personnel and the
patients, and at least eight MSF personnel have disappeared, and
we don't know if they are alive," Mego Terzian told Reuters.

People
gather near a destroyed building said to be a Medecins Sans
Frontieres (MSF) supported hospital in Marat al Numan, Idlib,
Syria, February 15, 2016 in this still image taken from a video
on a social media website.REUTERS/Social Media

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks
violence across the country, said one male nurse was killed and
five female nurses, a doctor and one male nurse are believed to
be under the rubble in the MSF hospital.

"The destruction of the hospital leaves the local population of
around 40,000 people without access to medical services in an
active zone of conflict," MSF mission chief Massimiliano
Rebaudengo said, the Associated Press notes.

Also in Marat Numan, another strike hit the National Hospital on
the north edge of town, killing two nurses, the Observatory said.

Residents in both towns blamed Russian strikes, saying the planes
deployed were more numerous and the munitions more powerful than
the Syrian military typically used.

A
view of the damaged interior of what is said to be a hospital
after a missile attack in Azaz, Aleppo, Syria, February 15, 2016
in this still image taken from a video on a social media
website.REUTERS/Social
Media

"The author of the strike is clearly ... either the government or
Russia," he said, adding that it was not the first time MSF
facilities in Syria had been attacked.

"We think it is Russia because the photos of the missiles have
Russian language (and) because we haven't seen this kind (of
missile) before the Russian intervention," Abdulrahman Al-Hassan,
chief liaison officer at the Syrian Civil Defense, told the
Associated Press.

The attack on the civilian targets come just one day after US
President Barack Obama called Russian President Vladimir Putin
and asked him to stop bombing moderate opposition targets in
Syria.

The US Department of State has called Russia's motives in Syria
into question with a statement that read in part:

"That the Assad regime and its supporters would continue these
attacks, without cause and without sufficient regard for
international obligations to safeguard innocent lives, flies in
the face of the unanimous calls by the ISSG (International Syria
Security Group), including in Munich, to avoid attacks on
civilians and casts doubt on Russia's willingness and/or ability
to help bring to a stop the continued brutality of the Assad
regime against its own people."

Col. Steve Warren, the Pentagon's spokesperson for Operation
Inherent Resolve, which includes the US air campaign in Syria,
took to Twitter soon after to confirm that US-led coalitions had
not bombed anywhere near the hospital on Monday.

People
gather near a destroyed building said to be a Medecins Sans
Frontieres (MSF) supported hospital in Marat al Numan, Idlib,
Syria, February 15, 2016 in this still image taken from a video
on a social media website.REUTERS/Social Media

But Moscow has said it is targeting "terrorist groups" and
dismissed any suggestion it has killed civilians since beginning
its air campaign in support of President Bashar al-Assad's forces
in September.

The town of Azaz has been the scene of fierce fighting as Kurdish
anti-government forces advance from the west. They have reached
the edge of town, only a few kilometers away from the main Bab al
Salam border crossing. The Syrian army is advancing from the
south.

Both the Kurds and the army want to wrest control of that stretch
of border with Turkey from the insurgents that currently hold
Azaz.

Russian bombing raids on rebel fighters are helping the Syrian
army to advance toward Aleppo, the country's largest city and
commercial center before the conflict. If the army takes the
city, it will by the Syrian government's biggest victory of the
war.